Ada Lovelace Day: Events and new website

With less than a month to go now until Ada Lovelace Day on 7th October, we are working hard on getting the new website up and running. I know this is the third year in a row that we’ve done stuff to the website, but this time we’re upping the ante and it will be well worth it! I’m very excited at what we’ve got in store for you and can’t wait for it to go live!

In the meantime, you should grab tickets to the Ada Lovelace Day events, which we are holding an association with BCSWomen.

Ada Lovelace Day Android Extravaganza
This one-day Android development workshop will introduce AppInventor and the basics of mobile development. It’ll be fun and interactive – no programming experience necessary. Bring your own laptop and an Android phone if you have one. Tea and coffee will be provided, but not lunch so either bring a packed lunch or be prepared to pop out for a sandwich.

Places at both events are limited, so you should book your tickets now to prevent disappointment! Please note that both events are open to all genders.

There are also other events going on that you might be interested in:

Great Minds on Innovation – Ada Lovelace Day
element14, the leading online community for Electronic Engineers, will support the aims of Ada Lovelace Day on the 7th of October 2011 by hosting a virtual series of talks by leading technologists and innovators across different countries. Ada Lovelace Day is an international day of celebration of the achievements of women in science, technology, engineering and maths.

Tampere University of Applied Sciences dedicates open learning space to Ada
The Tampere University of Applied Sciences, School of Art, Music and Media, in Tampere, Finland is creating a new open learning space “where teams can meet, work and showcasetheir projects”. Mr Cai Melakoski emailed to let me know that “The space is almost finished. The name will be Ada, because here we use coding for the purposes Ada dreamed about. We had not decided when to formally open the space, but when I noticed Ada Lovelace Day will this year be October 7 I decided that is the date of the event.”

A new beginning
This year we have expanded Ada Lovelace Day to embrace all the STEM disciplines, ie science, technology, engineering and maths, so there are plenty of inspirational women to choose from. We won’t be having a pledge per se, rather we are putting together a directory of tech heroines so that we can more easily curate related stories. That’s all part of the new website which is so very nearly ready to go!

What’s especially exciting to me, though, is that this year, Ada Lovelace Day itself has become less of a culmination and more of a new beginning. I want to make FindingAda.com a site that provides women in STEM with year-round support, access to resources and a fabulous source of inspiration. The changes you’ll see in the run-up to 7 October are just a fraction of the goodies we have in store for you.